Blood on Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street protesters battered in New York; a message to Angela Merkel on how to head off eurozone contagion; and Aung San Suu Kyl vowing "change from within" as reforms in Burma raise hopes of a turning point there. That's the focus for this look at the international press, Friday 18th November 2011.

The International Herald Tribune editorial looks at the eurozone crisis. It has two messages for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. First, she “should tell the German people the truth” that “the real threat to Germany isn’t inflation; it is an economic collapse across Europe”. And secondly, she must go with other eurozone leaders to meet the technocrats now running Greece and Italy to negotiate growth-oriented reform packages.

The Wall Street Journal Europe has a comment piece by foreign affairs professor Walter Russell Mead who says the eurozone crisis reflects two competing visions of Europe – a French one and a German one. “The French bottom line,” he argues, “is that Germany must help raise the carcass of the French banking system from the dead” while the Germans want “to keep the euro sound, budgets balanced and let the chips fall where they may”. Mead says cultural differences are at play: the Germans are richer, more stubborn, the French are flashier and faster on their feet.